Bathroom showers today almost inevitably emit only a stream of water with soap used in the hard cake or bar form. In a few environments a supply of liquid soap is provided in shower stalls rather than as a bar. In those situations a bottle of the liquid soap is typically mounted to a shower wall in an inverted orientation in association with hand operated valve means for dispensing soap from the bottle in spurts.
Heretofore situations have been recognized where it would be desirable to have liquid soap in the stream of water from the shower head itself, or at least in close proximity thereto. Representative of prior art devices thought to be usable as such are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,588,255 and 2,891,732. In the first of these patents liquid soap is gravitated from a container directly into the water line through which water is channeled to the shower head. This type of arrangement however functions very poorly due to the back pressure developed by the set of nozzle-like, restrictive openings in the shower head. This back pressure impedes the flow of liquid soap by gravity from its reservoir into the water line. Indeed, such can actually cause water to flow up into and flood the liquid soap supply reservoir. The device shown in the secondly mentioned patent provides a secondary flow of water taken off from the water supply line to the shower head which secondary flow is directed about a compressible bottle of liquid soap in a manner to squeeze and thereby force liquid soap out of the bottle and form a stream located beneath the main shower stream. This arrangement however results in the emission of three distinct streams, i.e. two water streams and one undiluted soap stream, with fully half of the water supplied to the shower head diverted to perform work merely in squeezing the compressible bottle of liquid soap. Such produces obvious waste and an adversely noticeable drop in main shower stream pressure.
Accordingly, it is seen that were a shower fixture to be devised which could be readily mounted to existing fixtures and effectively used in dispensing liquid soap into or at least adjacent to a shower stream in an effective and efficient manner, while overcoming the problem of back pressure, a distinct advance in the art would be achieved. It is to the provision of such therefore that the present invention is primarily directed.